


The Long Shadow

by superblackmarket



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, Rickyl, background prison family, bruises and sorry boys, close saves and near misses, friends to lovers to friends and lovers, mostly established relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 19:04:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5260133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superblackmarket/pseuds/superblackmarket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The anatomy of love, from first punch to sort-of-forever.</p><p>In which Rick and Daryl must painstakingly rewrite all the rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MermaidSheenaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidSheenaz/gifts).



When Rick finally kissed Daryl in the guard tower one night, Daryl socked him in the jaw and disappeared for a week. He left a crumpled note on Rick’s pillow _I will come back_. ‘Will’ underlined twice for emphasis. But time ruptured anyway and Rick toppled into the void. Suspended between his last glimpse of Daryl (azure eyes blown wide with shock) and that indefinite future moment when Daryl might return.

It felt like the end of the world. But the world had already ended, so it was like living past time, living past hope. Rick wanted to take to his bed like a nineteenth-century poet and nurse his damaged heart in private, but a single day spent staring at the ceiling brought more unwanted visitors than ever. So back to his garden he went, tilling the earth with a kind of muted fury. Doing Cain’s work. Sweat dirt and cruel, punishing rejection.

But Rick couldn’t regret kissing Daryl. Not when the need had been building inside him for so long. It would have combusted, one way or another. Daryl had slipped up behind him as he stood at the railing. Rested a hand on his hip. Easy, intimate and proprietary like they were already lovers. It had seemed like nothing, then, to turn into that embrace and press his lips to Daryl’s.

_I will come back._

Rick saw him everywhere. His long shadow rippling across the wall. The heel of his boot as he whipped round the corner. Wavering on the brink of madness, Rick told himself it was different this time, at least Daryl was _alive._ He wasn’t chasing ghosts but something much more elusive. _God I love him_ he caught himself thinking and had to laugh at his own stupidity. _The devil may care, but god sure fucking won’t._

Then, one week to the day of his disappearance, Daryl road up to the gates like a redneck messiah in a cloud of dust and fume.

Time resumed with a lurch. Rick hung back while their ever-growing extended family flocked out to greet him. Carol might have scolded, Glenn too, but Daryl had a miracle in his saddlebag to forestall any remonstrance. A pair of piglets, and a pragmatic prophecy to accompany them _dunno if they’re related, but odds are they’ll mate anyway._ Rick retreated to the watchtower, unceremoniously ousting Karen from her post, and waited for Daryl to come to him.

_I will come back._

Well, _fucking prove it_ Rick thought.

“Said I would,” Daryl told him, materializing suddenly in the doorway. His time in the wild imprinted on his body. Matted hair, streaks of dirt, unidentified blood. An animal wariness in his eyes.

“You can’t _do_ that,” Rick said. “Run away.”

Daryl’s blood burned because he hadn’t been _running_ , he had been standing nose-to-nose with his demons. Grappling em, pinning em to the ground. Getting his hands dirty. But here was Rick, looking like he had the wolves of hell on his tail. And looking at Daryllike _he_ had the power to call them off. _’M sorry, Rick._

“Wanna touch ya,” he said, not in the words that he’d practiced but the ones that sprang to his tongue unbidden. “Not sure if you can touch me, though.” It was a complex series of algorithms that connected his mind to his dick. Most of them irrational, like the square-root of 2. “Never liked sex. Never wanted it.” He was a proof by contradiction. “But while I was out there – most nights, jackin it ta the thought of you.” His cheeks burned. “Dunno what that means. Aint never happened like that before.” He couldn’t look at Rick. “’M confused as fuck-all.”

“We could be confused together,” Rick said.

~

Two weeks later and he’d coaxed Daryl into lying naked on the bed beside him. They took turns running their hands over each other. Daryl didn’t like competing mouths and hasty fingers; he would pull away when their caresses got too frenzied. So it was always deliberate, what they did together. Discarding clothes piece by piece. When Daryl’s shirt came off the first time, Rick lavished attention on his front before turning to his back. He scraped his teeth over the twin demons and kissed each vertebra while Daryl lay perfectly still, his breathing quick and shallow. After that it was easier and Daryl would stretch out on his stomach and look at Rick, wry and expectant. _Whatcha got fer me now, Grimes?_

And tonight they were naked. Silhouetted in candlelight as he lay beside Rick on the bed, Daryl was dark and sinuous. Eyes glittering with invitation. Rick stroked a hand over his chest and down the ridges of his abdominals, feeling the muscles ripple under his touch. Daryl didn’t jump and twitch these days so much as he arched and stretched, body extending like a cat’s.

Rick reveled in the proportions of him. The breadth of his shoulders and the slightness of his hips. The powerful arms, the long legs now tangled with his own. Rick was the kind of man who could think so long, his brain could well explode. Anticipation stifled them both; action was second nature. And so Daryl lolled against the pillows, loose and easy, and let Rick look.

Rick drank in the sight of him. Already half-hard, Daryl grew harder still under the scrutiny and flushed a delicate pink. But when Rick reached out a hand, Daryl caught his wrist in a firm grip. “Rather not, yet.” His lashes fluttered. “Don’t take it personal.”

“Sorry.” Rick rested his hand on Daryl’s stomach.

Daryl shifted slightly. “Could get you off, though.”

“No-no,” Rick stumbled. “If you don’t want – you don’t have to –”

“Dumbass,” Daryl said. “I _want_ to.”

He did. Giving came natural when Rick was looking at him as he was now, eyes warm with that word they hadn’t spoken yet. Taking would come later, when he was ready for it.

Rick damn near levitated with shock when he lowered his mouth (“thought you just wanted to _look_ at it!”) Which meant he had a dick much deeper in his throat than anticipated, but he didn’t gag easy so he managed to take it with good grace. He pinned Rick’s hips fast with his forearms, belatedly realizing that maybe he shoulda warned him they were going from zero to sixty in the space of a heartbeat.

Impervious as black metal all those years, maybe it was for the best he didn’t know the rules. Driven by curiosity he let his tongue take over – licking tracing exploring, wondering what Rick would respond to. _Everything_ , as it turned out. But Rick yelled when he began to work his tongue inside him. Loud, _too_ loud, so he went back to sucking. Rick fisted clumps of his hair and tried to pull him off as he came, but he wouldn’t be deterred so they made a mess of it, half in his mouth and half on Rick’s stomach. He crouched over him to lap up the evidence, keeping his tongue gentle.

Breathless and sweaty, curls plastered to his forehead, Rick pulled him in so they could lie together. “D’you wanna come?” he asked softly, and Daryl deliberated. Usually his dick quieted of its own accord, when he got tired or nervous or started feeling all wrong in his skin, itchy and discomfited. Tonight he’d thought it might happen when Rick came in his mouth, but it didn’t, quite. He was still hard, though, and there was a funny bit of liquid at the tip of his cock, like he’d started coming in spite of himself.

“Don’t move,” he ordered, making up his mind. He rolled half atop Rick so one of Rick’s legs was clasped between his own, and, cautiously, he began to rock against it.

The sensation of _finally_ ; he growled deep in his throat. Rick put an arm up to steady him. The heat and friction against his cock, he was dizzy with it. Hips starting to piston of their own accord. _Fuck, Rick._ “Shh, you’re okay,” Rick whispered. “Just let go.” Fiery supernovas exploding beneath his eyelids and – _fuck. FUCK._

Later, when he was putting on his clothes to leave, Rick caught his hand. “You know,” he said, voice rich and warm, “next time, you can do that inside of me.”

“Soon,” he agreed.

~

 _Soon_ stretched into several weeks. A sudden influx of new people meant more council meetings, more hunting, more public exposure. At the end of the day, if he didn’t have watch, he collapsed exhausted in his bunk, sex the furthest thing from his mind. They still kissed plenty, him and Rick, and slowly he’d feel the warmth pool in his belly. His fingertips tingled when he ran them through Rick’s hair. He liked the way their bodies looked together. Rick’s trim elegance, his own rangy leanness. The subtle variations of skin tone. Little things.

But other times his temper spiked and he pushed Rick away. He could only tolerate so much touching. The revelation of new sensitivities – his throat, his nipples, the jutting prow of his hipbone – aroused and alarmed him in turn. He never apologized, not for the capriciousness of desire. _Told ya this was how it was gonna be, how I am._

Progress was slow. But Daryl, he’d learned to tell his tracks by the holes in the soles of his shoes. Coulda retraced em if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other.

Sinking to his knees before Daryl, Rick looked up and his heart skipped a beat. Daryl sat on the edge of the bunk, naked, his chest already glistening with a light sheen of sweat. His legs spread much too wide; his toes barely touched the floor. Rick hooked his hands behind Daryl’s knees and eased his legs a little closer together. “Like this.”

Daryl nodded. His face was concentrated, eyes narrowed, lower lip drawn between his teeth. He looked fierce, and Rick felt a flutter of nerves. Ever since _I will come back_, he had been mapping the rugged territory of Daryl’s body and the even more precarious terrain of his heart. Like any surveyor, he’d made mistakes. Been too impulsive, failed to read the signs right. But Daryl trusted him; he’d said so, _I trust ya, Rick_ , the last time they were naked together and Rick had put a hand on his cock for the first time. _Jus’ go slow, kay?_

Rick mouthed along the line of his groin and licked a stripe from base to crown. Daryl stayed quiet, his hands resting lightly on Rick’s shoulders. Rick sank down a little on his knees and took Daryl into his mouth. With Daryl’s cock thick and heavy on his tongue, he remembered with cinematic detail every single thing Daryl had done when their positions were reversed. Daryl was more composed than Rick’d been, but he growled when Rick alternated hard sucking with slow down-and-up, dragging his tongue. He traced light circles over Daryl’s inner thighs, making him shiver.

“Can you,” Daryl said, voice thick as woodsmoke. “C’mon man, don’t make me wait.” When Rick met his eyes Daryl gave him a ferocious, blazing look. _I aint gonna beg._ His fingers dug into Rick’s shoulders, hard enough to bruise. _Don’t make me beg._

Rick sped up, crowding closer between Daryl’s parted legs and sucking him with a sloppy, wet rhythm. Daryl was completely silent now, but his hands were eloquent, stroking along Rick’s shoulders, his cheeks, coming to rest tentatively at the nape of his neck, twined in his hair. He nudged Rick’s head very gently, the barest suggestion, and inhaled sharply when Rick anchored his hips against the mattress and took him deeper.

“Think ’m gonna come.” Daryl ground the words out like each one cost him dearly. And then he did, silently ( _one day I’m gonna make you scream_ Rick vowed). Then he wanted to kiss Rick – open mouth and inquisitive tongue – curious if the taste of himself was much different from the taste of Rick.

~

Rick called it paradise when they were together. Said time slowed down to something easy and warm that he could wrap his arms around.

In reality he was batting Rick’s hand away from his dick most nights. _Nuh-uh, aint in the mood._ Rick accepted defeat with good humor and they talked instead. What Asskicker had done today, how Carl was making friends with a new kid called Patrick. He tried to engage Rick in council business but Rick wasn’t having it. _I’m just a farmer now, Daryl._ Rick and Carl built a pen for the pigs and soon the brother-pig had knocked up his sister-pig. Brother-pig got butchered while Daryl was out on a run, which was a damn shame, but at least they had bacon for a couple days.

He spent his first night in Rick’s cell. It was uncomfortable as hell. Elbows and knees digging into each other. Didn’t work unless they spooned, Big Dipper-Little Dipper. Going to bed chilly and waking up drenched in sweat. Made him claustrophobic sometimes, Rick’s chest plastered to his back. All that damp naked skin. And he usually woke with Rick’s hard-on rubbing against his ass. Big spoon suited him better. Meant Rick couldn’t reach round and tweak his nipples, for one thing. And he’d never held anyone, never had anyone sleep in his arms before. Nothing to jangle the alarm in his sleeping brain and plunge him back into old nightmares.

~

One morning he woke, first blush of dawn, with his own hard-on nudging between Rick’s ass cheeks. Huh. He shifted slightly. His nipples felt taut and sensitive and his nose tickled like he was on the brink of sneezing.

“Fingers,” Rick whispered hoarsely, and he started; he hadn’t realized the other man was awake.

Took him a minute to understand. Took him several to work up to it. Then he got two fingers wet with spit and began to ease one of them inside Rick. He could feel Rick’s toes twitching and curling against his leg. He added the second finger and Rick inhaled sharply. “Is this right?” he murmured. “What ’m doing to ya?”

“Yeah – god, yeah –”

So he coaxed Rick’s thighs open with one of his own. Put his cock where his fingers had been. It was the most intimate thing he’d ever done, and it took a lifetime. Rick’s body held out some resistance but Rick wouldn’t let him stop _keep going, keep going, you’re almost – we’re almost –_

He held Rick tight against his chest and lavished distracted kisses on his neck, his ear, anything to soothe and distract as he worked in slowly, bit by bit. Didn’t even realize he was there til Rick went stiff as a board. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Daryl,” Rick groaned, and rocked back against him.

He buried his face in Rick’s hair as his whole body began to shake. He inhaled the familiar scent of soil and sweat and rough soap, trying to understand what he was feeling. Rampant pleasure, yes, and _want_ , too. The most he’d ever wanted anything, maybe ever. Felt so deep in his bones he felt like crying.

The view from the mountaintop was dizzying. Some folks, like Rick, they got there easy. Soaring up on broad eagle wings. Others, like him, they had to crawl. Didn’t make much difference in the end, though.

Another throaty moan from Rick. His head felt light and bright spots danced across his vision. The heat, the tightness, the closeness. Big Dipper-Little Dipper didn’t give much range of motion but he found a steady rocking pace that had Rick breathing in sharp little pants and smothering his moans in the pillow. _He_ knew how to keep quiet, he’d kept quiet his whole life, but the cacophony in his head was deafening. He was stroking Rick’s cock with a fast wet rhythm and Rick was turning his head and they were kissing, kissing… Rick’s neck at an odd angle, sweat gathering between them, teeth and stubble scraping… The first burst of euphoria was Rick’s, but he felt it so keenly that he thought it was his. Moments later it became his, too.

~

Daryl and Michonne were gone five days when they should have been gone four. Rick abandoned his half-tilled garden and was buckling on his python to lead the search & rescue when the two of them rolled up, dirty and scruffy as alley cats. And bloody too, as it turned out, when he followed Daryl down to the showers and watched him strip off his shirt to reveal a nasty gash across his chest.

“I don’t care if it was the Governor himself,” Rick snapped. “We agreed four days.”

Daryl grunted something that sounded like _close enough._ He turned on the water and folded his arms, obviously waiting for Rick to leave so he could finish undressing and get on with it, but Rick wasn’t budging. He was pissed as hell. Not so much that Daryl had been late but that he could be so fucking _nonchalant_ about it. As if Rick hadn’t been pacing and brooding and drowning in cold terror – for twenty-four interminable hours – that this was the time Daryl wouldn’t return.

“Did it ever cross your mind how worried we’d be? _I_ ’d be?”

“How’s I sposed ta get back ta ya that we was late? Carrier pigeon?” Daryl demanded. He’d edged into a corner and his eyes were darting nervously about the room.

“Look, this isn’t about you being late. This is about you _not caring_ that –”

Daryl pursed his mouth. “You pissed cos you aint been laid?”

 _That_ was unfair. He had always respected the unpredictability of Daryl’s moods, never pushed him for sex unless Daryl initiated it. And he was fine with their arrangement, more than fine, for the first time in years he was _happy_ , he was fucking head-over-heels, and a certain word had been rattling round and round in his brain. Five days he had endured, imagining how he might finally say it to Daryl, that word, if – _when_ – Daryl returned, and now Daryl was flinging it back in his face.

Rick stomped forward, his finger jabbing the air. “God _damn_ it Daryl, what do I have to–”

And then his ass hit the wet tiles and his ears rang. It happened so quick he thought he’d slipped, but suddenly Daryl was looming above him. Eyes flashing, body tense as a coiled spring. “Go on, man, jus’ try it. I will fucken _end_ you.”

Rick’s mouth fell open. Daryl was balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, agile and ready to spring. To fight. To fight _him._ He didn’t understand, they were only having an argument, everyone argued now and then, it was no –

(Someone advancing on him with a raised hand and pointed finger, goddamn it Daryl, what do I have to

 _–do to knock some sense into you, boy? Get over here, you worthless little shit. You think that hurt? You aint seen nuthin yet. Hold still, Imma teach you real good this time._ )

“Daryl –” he began brokenly. “I would never _._ I shouldn’t have come at you like that, I’m sorry, but you gotta know, I would _never_ …”

Daryl took one step back. Then another. Til he was pressed against the wall, as far from Rick as he could get. Then he turned his back. “Get outta here, man.”

Rick’s heart sank further. “You want me to go?”

Daryl was silent. He had his hands braced against the wall and his shoulders hunched defensively. But he was showing his back, Rick thought confusedly. For Daryl to show his back, that was like a dog rolling over to expose its soft underbelly. A sign of absolute trust. Trust and lo-

“Daryl?” he said tentatively. “D’you still want me to leave?”

“Want ya ta leave,” Daryl said. “Don’t want ya ta leave _me_.”

~

Fights came thick and fast like summer rain. Days when Rick was too protective, too paranoid, too talky, too handsy. Nights when Daryl was restless, withdrawn, prickly, indifferent. Their spats rattled Rick’s cage but didn’t shake him to his core. _Leave, but don’t leave me._

It was new, caring for someone who was his equal in every regard. He and Daryl – they really filled a room. Cell too small, bed too tight, ceiling too low, never enough oxygen to go around. He’d kiss Daryl til he was blue in the face but Daryl needed to let the air in sometimes, disappear into the woods with nowt but his crossbow for company. He led most of the runs, too, taking Michonne or Glenn for backup; he saw more action than anyone but that was how he wanted it _don’t want nobody gettin killed on my watch._ Rick wished he could add his own name to Daryl’s motley assortment of tattoos. _So I’m always with you_ he might have said one night, sentimental after trading blowjobs. _That’s the dumbest fucken thing I ever heard_ Daryl might have replied.

Rick and Carl were working in the garden one afternoon when Maggie and Glenn drove up to the gate, back from a supply run. Carl ran to let them in. After the car passed through, Carl made to close the gate again, but something jammed and the heavy apparatus wouldn’t budge. Carl dug his heels in and tugged, and that was when three walkers descended upon Rick’s son. His _unarmed_ son, because _he_ had insisted that they no longer carry weapons. Rick shouted Carl’s name and began to sprint towards the gate, but he was too far away, too far –

First one walker, then another, dropped as if by magic. Rick was close enough to see Carl smash a rock into the skull of the third walker. Then he spotted the feathered bolts sticking out of the other two and pulled Carl into his arms. Shaken and blood-spattered, but unharmed. He hugged him so tightly Carl began to squirm. “Dad, c’mon, you’re crushing me.” Rick raised his eyes to the guard tower, where he could just make out a shadowy figure holding a crossbow.

Even as he clutched his _living, breathing_ son against his chest, he felt a spark of anger. It had been a risky shot. _Two_ risky shots. Moving targets, at such great distance – the arrows could have struck Carl instead. _He_ wouldn’t have taken those shots, he wouldn’t have dared. 

Rick avoided Daryl for the rest of the day. _Did what I couldn’t. Saved him. Could’ve killed him._ Daryl said he and Merle used to get a kick outta playing William Tell. Daryl would plug the shotglass balanced on Merle’s head or the burning cigarette between his lips; it was a tidy little bar trick, earned them some quick money. And now the same reckless, Wild West sharpshooting had saved Carl’s life. Carl was unfazed by his close call, too amped on admiration and awe for what Daryl had done, buzzing around his hero like an eager little gnat. Rick felt sick. Guilt, gratitude and anger all knotted up in his guts.

“Never woulda took the shot if I wasn’t sure,” Daryl told him, when he slipped into Rick’s cell late that night. Everything about him was steady and unwavering – his clear blue eyes, his muscular arms, his reliable triggerfinger. Something inside Rick crumbled. He sagged against Daryl and soaked his collar with hot, silent tears.

Then Rick laid Daryl down and made love to him. The act was still sporadic enough between them that Rick treated each time as if it were their last. Inside Daryl, he was gripped with sudden fear that they might never have this again. _Do it once, then_ Daryl told him _but do it right._ So Rick took it slow, sightless in the dark, every other sense attuned to the body beneath his. Daryl’s hands were firm where they rested on his hips. _You okay?_ he said _Mm-hmm_ Daryl replied, wrapping a leg around his waist to guide him deeper.

~

“How long’s it been since we had sex?” he asked, and Rick replied, with his usual precision, “Eleven days. We had sex the day Violet had her piglets and that was eleven days ago.”

“Shit,” he mused. “’S been a while then.” He never apologized but he’d got better at explaining. “Talkin ta so many new folks, it fucken wipes me out, man. Cells’re fillin up. ’S like everybody’s listenin even when I know they aint. Turns me off.” He sighed. “You mad?”

“Course not,” Rick said, plopping down beside him. They leaned into each other. It was fucked up, he thought; Rick shoulda lost his temper a long time ago. Stop and go. Red light green light. Daryl didn’t know why he was the way he was. If it had something to do with the nightmares or the scars on his back. Psychoanalytic bullshit. Sometimes he just didn’t feel like sex, was all.

Both of them stared down at Rick’s lap, where his erection continued to draw attention to itself.

Daryl rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Lemme –” he began, but Rick cut him off.

“No – Daryl, _stop._ ”

He paused, fingers hovering over Rick’s belt buckle.

“It doesn’t feel right anymore. You getting me off when you don’t want me to get you off, too.”

“What if I don’t mind gettin ya off?”

“No,” Rick said stubbornly. “That’s not how I want it between us.”

“’S how yer dick wants it, cowboy.”

“Stop staring at it and maybe it’ll go away.” 

“Say I never wanna fuck again,” he challenged. “Whatcha gonna do then?”

“Explode,” Rick said, staunchly.

“Get off yer high horse, man,” he snapped. “Aint doin me no favors with that routine a’yers, so quit actin so goddamn holy.”

He didn’t like the look on Rick’s face. A muscle was twitching in his jaw and his neck had flushed blotchy red. “You think I don’t want it?” he spat. “Of course I fucking do. Bad _._ But if I start _using_ you for – I don’t wanna go down that road, Daryl.”

“Aint gonna feel used fer one fucken blowjob.” Christ, he needed a smoke. “I offered, didn’t I? Means I’m happy ta suck yer dick, else I wouldn’t’ve offered. Don’t gotta make it about my daddy or some shit like that.”

The absurdity of the situation wasn’t lost on him. Rick’s stupid boner was still there, stubbornly ignoring all the altruistic sentiments coming out of his mouth. Daryl could feel his lip twitching and he raised an eyebrow at Rick, who released an undignified snort and threw his hands up in the air.

“Okay, fine, you win! This has gotta be one of the craziest arguments I ever – … shit Daryl, that feels… oh, _Jesus_ …”

Rick offered to do him after, all pink-cheeked and seraphic and sated with sex. If Daryl was other people he woulda got it up then and there, done the deed. But he wasn’t, so they just kissed some more and went to bed.

~

No rhyme, no reason, irrational as the square-root of 2. Couple nights later he went to Rick’s cell and tumbled them straight into bed. Hands shaking with haste and eagerness as he worked Rick open. Briefly and wickedly replacing fingers with tongue, because that drove Rick fucking _senseless._ Intimate and invasive and almost _too_ personal. Rubbing his face into Rick’s softest skin, leaving stubble burn in his wake. Sliding his body up and his cock in, giving Rick time to adjust before finding the jagged rhythm they both loved. Rick took hold of his ass with bruising fingers and told him _harder._

It was a luxury, kissing someone he actually wanted to kiss. Fucking someone he actually wanted to fuck. Actually wanting to fuck. Not always, not often, but often enough.

Rick said the word he sometimes said now, surrounded by _I_ and _you_. Then he said _more_ and _harder_ again.

“Crazy sonuvabitch,” he gasped, and gave Rick what he wanted. Twisting his hips as he slammed into him, no more teasing, hitting that spot every time. All the nerves in his body coming to life, singing with exhilaration. He felt wild, and a little bit delirious.

He opened his eyes and looked at Rick. Damp hair, giant pupils, mouth a bruised _o_ of desperation. The depth of Rick’s need nearly undid him. He knew Rick better than he knew himself, and he could read Rick’s body like braille. Rick’s knees dug into his ribcage and his legs were trembling; that meant he was close. Shit, Daryl was close too. Starting to lose control. Kissing Rick, dragging him upward by the hips and wrapping a rough hand round his cock to give him the friction he needed to finish. Rushing towards the end but also wanting to hold them there, vibrating at the edge of the event horizon, for as long as he could.

A poorly stifled moan and sudden wetness between them; then at last he could let go, too, the force of his release driving them both into the mattress.

He felt like melting butter after. Ready to pass out then and there, leave the mess til morning, but Rick was oddly energized. _Ya know you aint gonna get it up again, old man._ Rick smiled ruefully _Just let me look at you_ his eyes said. With a groan, Daryl shifted onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. _Look yer fill, aint goin nowhere._

Rick stretched out on his side next to him. Hand hovering an inch above his heart. “Don’t you fucken dare –” he began, already feeling phantom fingers pinching his nipple. But Rick just flattened his palm against his burning skin and Daryl could feel his heart jumping, like it was trying to bust out of its cage right into Rick’s hand. Their intertwined bodies cast a long shadow on the wall. The feeling of Rick’s eyes roaming over his naked skin… A blizzard of petals coming at him in a storm. _That’s the way you make me feel, like warm._

At last he propped himself up on his elbow and blew out the candle. Plunged into darkness, him and Rick kissed long and languid. _All the time in the world_.

He’d ridden the express of the ne’er-do-wells, been riding it his whole life, so getting off took some getting used to. His lungs were fit to bursting with all the words he didn’t have. Asskicker was _sweetheart_ and sometimes _lil darlin_ , and Carl was usually _kid_ or _brat_. But Rick… His heavy tongue couldn’t find the right endearment, the right anything. _Mine_ he thought, opening his mouth for Rick. _Mine._


End file.
